


Between The White Lines

by ErikaWilliams



Series: Heith Week [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Established Relationship, Ghost Drifting, M/M, The Drift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 17:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8253838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErikaWilliams/pseuds/ErikaWilliams
Summary: They had been drifting together for years, fighting the Kaiju side by side.  They were both intimately familiar with the concept of death, but he never imagined it would happen like this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I basically threw some of my Voltron/Pacific Rim AU head-canons together, laced them with some angst and called it a fic.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, not in some small, dingy hospital room strong with the smell of antiseptic and the steady hum and beep of hospital equipment. Or, if it was going to end in a hospital, it should be either been years from now after they had retired or they should have gone together.

Sure, when he had first been given this assignment, he didn’t think they would last for more than a year. At the Academy, he had never paid much attention to Hunk. There had been no reason to. He had tested more positively with Shiro, had run all his simulations with Shiro, had prepared himself to copilot with Shiro. Then Shiro had been partnered with Matt Holt, and he found himself drifting with Hunk.

He reached out to lightly grab Hunk’s hand on top of the thin blanket, mindful of the IV. The days and hours he had spent sitting there, intermittently holding Hunk’s hand or pleading with him through tears, had all started to blur together to the point where he no longer knew if it was day or night outside this little room. His whole universe had been narrowed down to this.

No one had expected them to last beyond their first couple of months. With a Jaegar named Toasted Marshmallow, even the press put the odds in favor of the Kaiju for their first dozen fights or so. He blamed himself for the name. He had been bitter about not piloting with Shiro and had left Hunk to name their Jaegar on his own. Hunk had apparently been just a little hungry at the time and had given the lion-gold Jaegar the name of the first thing he thought of. Keith had been appalled at first when he heard what had happened, and when he realized he was actually going to have to call his Jaegar that. But... the name had grown on him, and so had his partnership with Hunk.

A nurse came by to check Hunk’s vitals, and he leaned back to let her work, letting go of Hunk’s hand, afraid of what might happen if some small action on his part would interfere. She smiled warmly at him as she checked Hunk’s blood pressure, and he simply stared back at her.

“I was in Tokyo when the two of you took out Scuttleclaw,” she said, still smiling at him.

Scuttleclaw had been one of the first Kaiju they fought when they had been assigned together, before they had successfully found their balance. It had been a tough battle, lasting over five hours, a battle he had been sure they were going to lose. Hunk had believed in them though. Hunk had believed in him. Hunk had a great deal of faith in Keith’s abilities to overcome any of his own shortcomings as a pilot. It was Hunk’s faith in him and their ability to overcome the Kaiju that had allowed him to pull through. Now he needed to believe in Hunk, to help Hunk pull through. He needed to keep that faith in the front of his mind, in case some part of the Drift kept them connected even now.

“Who knew the Rangers of a Jaegar called Toasted Marshmallow would be so… competent,” she finished very suggestively. He had dealt with women like her before, Ranger groupies who were always looking for something. He just usually didn’t find them in hospitals.

Now that she was done with her tests, he reached back out to lightly grab Hunk’s hand, rubbing his thumb along the side of his hand.

“Ah,” she said, disappointment clearly etched across her face. “So that’s how it is then,” she said before she strode from the room with an angry sway to her hips. He wasn’t sad to see her go.

Ghost drifting, he thought was the proper term for it, and the two of them had a bad case of it from day one. None of the other Rangers from their class had it as bad as they did, and sometimes he thought Shiro was worried about what it might do to him. Research on ghost drifting was slim, as most Rangers just accepted it as a side effect of their chosen career path. It started out as something inconsequential, so subtle that it took him a while to figure out what was going on. He had started quitting training to head to the mess long before Hunk would tell him he was hungry.

Gradually, he began to realize he was feeling what Hunk was feeling and vice versa long after they had been disconnected from the Drift. They had shared laughter, tears, and eventually dreams. At first they had been fleeting glimpses of dreams, snippets that had blended into his own fantasies. It was less than six months before they started sharing full dreams, and that was around the time General Allura had decided to send them to a specialist, afraid the ghost drifting would interfere with their professional relationship. He had given her plenty of cause to worry. The first time he and Hunk had shared a more intimate dream, he had been unable too look Hunk in the eye for three days afterward.

Still, all of that had been before, and right now he wanted nothing more than for Hunk to wake up and look at him. No Ranger relationship should end like this. If they were meant to die at this stage, they should have died together, inside their Jaegar while fighting the Kaiju. There was no honor or dignity in dying like this. He held on to that warm presence in his mind he had associated with Hunk. Maybe there was a way he could use that thread to bring Hunk back to him.

Later, after he was well adjusted to copiloting with Hunk and the piloting of a Jaegar named Toasted Marshmallow, nearly fifteen months later, General Allura called him into her office for a debriefing. She admitted to him that if she had chosen, he could have copiloted with Shiro. Or Lance. Or Pidge. He had been tested to be drift compatible with all of them. Likewise, Hunk had been drift compatible with Shiro. And Lance. And Pidge. And yes, it was true that he probably would have fought better with Shiro at his side, but he probably would have died much younger. It had been a pragmatic decision to pair him with Hunk instead. Hunk whose sensibility should keep his more reckless impulses in check. Shiro, they felt, would have been more inclined to go along with him, and therefore they might have been killed in action long before now. By separating them, they had hoped to keep two Jaegars in the field instead of just one. By that point he had accepted his fate, and his relationship with Hunk had grown to the extent where he would not have taken a transfer even if she had offered it to him. She had just confirmed what he had started to suspect for a while.

Still, none of that would bring Hunk back to him now. He leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable while still keeping his grip on Hunk’s hand. He could feel tears stinging at the corners of his eyes even though he had been sure he had cried himself out several times over. It was the stress, and the fact that he hadn’t slept since the incident, keeping vigilance by Hunk’s bedside. Hunk would want to see a familiar face when he opened his eyes, not find himself alone after spending the last several years at Keith’s side and in his head.

They had been happy for a while. They were a better match than anyone could have anticipated, in more ways than one. He had spent most of his life alone, bounced around in the foster system until he finally found himself enrolled in the Ranger Academy. At least then he had a place to stay, a purpose, and the Kaiju provided an outlet on which to vent his frustrations. But even after that sense of finding a place he belonged, none of that compared to the way he felt when he was with Hunk, whether they were drifting together inside their Jaegar or if he was in Hunk’s arms. If being a Ranger was where he belonged, being with Hunk was like coming home.

Home, where he was safe. A place he knew he could always rely on. He was starting to think Hunk was always going to be there for him, a steady presence that could protect him from his own shortcomings. Granted, the thought was always in the back of their minds that they could die the next time they were called out to fight the Kaiju. All Rangers dealt with that every day of their lives. And all those near death experiences had lead to some crazy adrenaline filled nights that he would not have traded for anything in the world. So, yes, they were both well acquainted with the concept of dying. But they were supposed to die together. It wouldn’t be right for Hunk to leave him behind like this.

The tears finally came again, spilling down his face onto his and Hunk’s joined hands. Three days ago. Three days ago was when everything had started to fall apart. They had been out together, out of the Shatterdome, downtown, just the two of them on what was probably the closest thing to a real date that existed in this post-apocalyptic world. Pidge and Lance had just taken down the latest Kaiju threat, and he and Hunk had decided to go downtown to celebrate another day of being alive with dinner at some restaurant Hunk had wanted to try for a while. He had almost forgotten about the war and everything else by the time dessert had rolled around.

Never mind that they had not been responsible for the Kaiju corpse currently being raided on the beach. Never mind that Toasted Marshmallow had the lowest kill count at the Shatterdome. They weren’t exactly great pilots, they were mostly just average called out as support or to give the other Jaegars back up when multiple Kaiju attacked. None of that mattered to the Kaiju loving fanatic with a gun who shot at them. He had been missed, maybe because Hunk had quickly shielded him, he would never know, but the terrorist had managed to hit Hunk before someone else tackled the guy while he was distracted with trying to kill them.

The hospital had reacted quickly, and had done everything they could for Hunk. But now all he could do was sit and wait and pray that Hunk would manage to pull through this.


End file.
